University of California-Irvine Top Questions

Don't strive for the best school rank, but work on schools that best fit your area of interest.

Study for the AP tests and pass them. Once you do, you will have more units that may boost you up and allow you to choose classes sooner, getting the ones that you want. Do your classes for yourself, no one else, otherwise there'll be no incentive to complete them or your major. Do what you enjoy doing, not what others tell you that you "might be good at". Might be better to go in as Undeclared and then pick the major that you like best. Give everything a try and attempt to talk to the people that you live with! Your neighbors are amazing!

Although community college is a great choice to save money, there are so many precious things such as greek life and the outstanding school clubs in 4-year universities that junior college can not beat.

Going to community college is nothing to be ashamed of, the quality of education is just as good as at a 4-year university, and it provides a good transition stage. Going to community college is also a good financial decision because the fee's are a fraction of the cost of a university, and the quality of education is just as good, if not better.

Take the risk and put yourself out there. You will meet alot of great people. Get involved, make friends, and dorm on campus. You will meet and connect to alot of people if you dorm on campus. Enjoy your freshmen year before your major courses comes into action. Try to map out courses and extracurricular activities like study abroad or summer school or clubs/sororities. Do not slack off! Once you get into the habit, it is hard to recover and study. Learn to manage you time with school and your social life. Don't over do it. Do not study too much, but do not hang out too much as well. You will have to figure out how to manage and schedule your time properly. Do not be undecisive. Just do it. In addition, do not forget to have fun! That is the BEST part!

Going to a small high school made building friendships easy. And going to a large, public college is a good move to counteract that experience. Living in the dorms is also a good move. But be prepared to learn how to maintain friendships. You'll figure out the value of this skill once the high school connections start to fray and the ones simply unfit to survive are reduced to Facebook birthday greetings. You'll figure this out again once you're out the comfort of the dorms and into apartments. Stop assuming that you'll run into people on the street, prompting a spontaneous coffee talk. Pick up the phone. Make it happen. And learn to tolerate a little bit of negativity sometimes--positivity is often contagious, and you'll never know whose life you might have enriched for being nice.

If I could go back into time, I would advise my high school self to disregard her preconceived notions of success and pursue what really makes her happy. In this, I would encourage my high school self to travel prior entering college. Having travelled quite a bit, I have found that immersing myself in different cultures forced me to challenge the notions I grew up with and exposed me to a plethora of new ideas, different perspectives, and knowledge I would have not encountered otherwise. The experiences I have had abroad have shaped me into a more self aware and independent person; two traits I think are highly important for my high school self to comprehend for a smooth and successful transition to college.

As you enter college, be open-minded. You're entering a completely new environment with new traditions and customs. Although you don't adapt to change very quickly, maintain an open mind. Be accepting of what you and your friends get involved in because in the end it will all turn out for the best. Stay focused in school but ALWAYS have fun. Start college off strong and challenge yourself to continue maintaining a high GPA so that you end even stronger. Pursue an extracurricular activity such as tennis or Hindi film dance and stick with it. You're going to meet new people each and every day while you're at college, but only a few of them will end up being your really close friends. Don't try and get to know anybody because at the end of the day you'll feel like you know nobody. Find your niche in school and thrive within it. You have the intelligence, the drive, and the vision of the future you've always dreamed of. It's time to make it reality. Good luck!

I would first of all tell myself to stop being afraid to take risks just because mistakes may occur. Making mistakes is what life is all about. Making a fool of your self so you can learn something new and improve is the best thing you can do to prepare yourself for the real world. In five years, it won't matter what stupid questions you asked, or what mistakes you made in your first scholarship interview. What will matter is that now you know the right questions to ask, you know the answers to all the questions you thought were stupid, and you know what not to do in an interview. Every time you make the choice to sit back and take the safe route, you're losing out on the opportunity to learn how the real world works (and yes the "real world" really does exist). Take risks and embrace opportunities, it's okay to be scared of things that are new and foreign, but don't let your fear hold you back. If you do this, by the time you finish college you'll know you can tackle anything, because you've already been through so much.

Never give up, and never slack off